Resident aims to bring sweet store to life

NEAALM110518D2 - Peter Saunders with the bricked up window of the former sweet shop.

Published:08:00Wednesday 25 May 2011

A KIMBERLEY resident is turning the clock back and re-building a sweet shop where it used to stand at the back of his Victorian property.

Peter Saunders wants to re-create the shop so it looks just like it did years ago, before opening his entire house up for public tours later this year.

Mr Saunders, 31, who has appeared in the Advertiser and the national press about the restoration of his Chapel Street home back to its former Victorian glory, said the sweet shop was the ‘missing piece of the jigsaw’.

“When I have shown people around, that’s the only thing missing,” he said.

“I’ve always known I’ve wanted to do it.”

Mr Saunders has spoken to local historian Roy Plumb and Brian Smith, the grandchild of Edith Robinson who lived at the address in the early 1900s, to find out as much as he can about what the shop used to look like.

Mr Plumb remembers the shop from when he was a child and has told Mr Saunders where the till and counters were.

The sweet shop was run by a Miss Pedley between 1930 and the late 1960s when it closed, but it is thought to have been built into the house back in 1890.

Miss Pedley would get most of her trade from people leaving the train station.

Mr Saunders would love to know more about the layout of the shop, what the window was like and if there were any signs. He is also appealing for any past owners of the property to get in touch.